NEW YORK CITY, November 15 — The recent annual mass meeting of TWU (Transport Workers Union) Local 100, representing most, but not all, MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) workers, painted a grim future for the union. However, angry rank-and-file workers who want mass confrontation against MTA bosses over racism, unemployment, pay, service and fares have the potential to spark a bright beacon of mass anti-racist class struggle for the entire international working class.
Transit workers move New York and they can stop New York in fighting the racist MTA bosses, who focus cuts on mainly black, Latino and immigrant riders and workers. Bus Operators in an MTA Queens Village depot, represented by ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) Local 1056, demonstrated some of this power on November 12 when they refused to take assignments from a racist dispatcher who called a Bus Operator a n-----. Their protest halted more than 20 buses for two hours and defied New York’s Taylor Law that bans job actions by government workers.
Such struggles can provide fertile ground to build a mass, fighting Progressive Labor Party that unites workers, the unemployed, students and soldiers in a revolutionary communist movement against the entire racist worldwide system of capitalism.
Racist U.S. Bosses Target Mass Transit
A liberal New York Daily News writer and the ATU International President detailed U.S. rulers’ nation-wide cuts to mass transit. Huge layoffs, union-busting and contracts with 0% raises or cuts have become the norm in just a few years. TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen warned of pension cuts for both new and current MTA workers, possibly raising years of service and the retirement age needed to collect a pension to 30/62 from 25/55.
In the 1960s and ’70s, anti-racist rebellions in black inner cities, wildcat strikes and the civil rights movement opened up relatively stable and well-paying transit jobs to black, Latino and immigrant workers. But today rivalry between imperialists — the world’s richest and most powerful capitalist classes — is forcing bosses worldwide to exploit “their” workers more than their competitors’. U.S. bosses’ “recovery” is built directly on mass racist unemployment that forces double unemployment rates on black workers and attacks all workers.
Rank-and-File Must Push Union Hacks Out of the Way
Several workers at the November 5 mass meeting told CHALLENGE they’ve organized job slowdowns over safety. These efforts were mainly individual, with varying support from co-workers. Many of these angry workers want backing and leadership from top union officials. But only rank-and-file workers themselves can lead militant fight-back.
The Local 100 leadership effectively accepted layoffs in return for maintaining the current contract. Local 100 heads spent most of their time and energy on lobbying for transit-funding bills and negotiating the re-hiring of laid-off workers in various titles. Once they even floated a scheme to create a Local 100-operated dollar-van company to re-hire laid-off bus operators. These efforts didn’t challenge the layoffs in the first place and failed to win even small gains. Most anti-layoff protests or job actions were small, scattered and organized separately in Local divisions.
Looking towards the next contract, Samuelsen said neither Republicans nor Democrats are our friends. But then almost in the same breath he bragged about helping save NY Democratic Congressional seats and insisted he would lead a massive lobbying campaign to revive two transit funding bills that died in Congress. Lobby and give money to our enemies says Samuelsen!
Workers Need Mass Class Struggle
Both the leading faction of Local 100 hacks and their “opposition” focus on corruption and in-fighting instead of opposing more layoffs and organizing support for laid-off transit workers. Hoping for their help is a dead end. The recent anti-racist mini-strike of rank-and-file ATU Local 1056 members, and major strikes of transit workers in Europe, show that rank-and-file workers can organize a mass fight-back against the MTA and unite transit workers, employed and unemployed.
The bosses can use courts, banks and the rest of their racist class dictatorship to reverse temporary gains won through worker’s militant struggle. But with communist leadership, strikes, job actions and rebellions can build the forces needed to win a lasting, anti-racist, communist working-class dictatorship that smashes the bosses in revolution.